Carl Paladino’s Points of Pride

“ a Gay Pride parade, I was at one in Toronto one time—we stumbled on it, my wife and I. It wasn’t pretty. It was a bunch of very extreme-type people in bikini-type outfits grinding at each other and doing these gyrations I stumbled on one in Toronto one time, with my wife, and we watched this. And there were men in Speedos grinding and doing things, okay, to each other on this tractor-trailer. And I just said that's not right at a Gay Pride parade, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been to one, but they wear these little Speedos and they grind against each other. And it’s just a terrible thing.”

—New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, in various remarks.

We left the parade, and stumbled into a bar—that is, with my female wife I’m legally married to and with whom I have potentially procreative missionary intercourse. An NFL game was on TV, and I don’t know if you’ve ever watched one of these contests, but it was a bunch of very steroidal-type athletes in skintight-type uniforms grinding and grabbing and piling on each other and patting everyone’s behind after each play and doing these gyrations and jukes and balletic moves to make catches with both feet inbounds. It wasn’t attractive.So we fled to a nearby college, my wide-hipped helpmeet and I, and we found ourselves in what’s called a fraternity house during their hazing initiation. I’m not sure if you know what goes on in these places, but it was a group of light-beer-chugging-type students in Abercrombie-&-Fitch-type clothes making each other perform stunts naked and paddling each other while crawling through their legs and reciting obscure historical facts about their organization. And I just said it was wrong.

I felt dirty and left, and I happened to come across a health club with a sauna, along with my XX-chromosomal partner—if you want proof of that, by the way, I always carry around a battery of genetic tests I made her take. I went into the men’s sauna, and she went to the women’s, because she’s a woman. Even describing it is repulsive to me, but since you’ve probably never been to one, it’s a lot of perspiring-and-Eastern-European-type overweight individuals in skimpy-type towels or hirsute nude-type bodies, discussing finance and local sports teams and taking off their skimpy-type wet towels to snap each others’ behinds. It’s just a gross thing.

Before I ran out screaming, one of the men invited me to his weekly poker game. My fairer-sex partner sat in the car while I tripped inside the house and sorry, I just had a gag reflex while recalling the memory. What I found was a number of balding-type middle-managers in relaxed-fit, dad-type khakis who were seeking an outlet from their unhappy homes and failed midlife expectations by making jokes about the disparate sizes of their own and each others’ genitalia but being afraid or unable to express any real intimacy or vulnerability. Oh, God, hold on, I might vomit.

O.K., I think I’ll be fine. Thankfully, one of the men suggested we go see a new movie playing around the street. I told my womanly companion to come along, and what we saw—and if you’ve never seen this, you’re lucky—was something called The Expendables. It starred ten washed-up-or-C-list-type action stars needing a paycheck and playing experts in a variety of phallic weaponry and sexual-potency-cathected explosive devices who enacted psychological transferences for the audience of feelings of inadequacy, emasculation, and libidinal repression. It was just an abhorrent film, and poorly paced with uninspired cinematography.

I then somehow came across these following scenes, with my feminine spouse nearby or at least in my thoughts: hunting wild animals with another man and sleeping in a tent together in the woods with no one else around; spotting other lifters in the weight room and shouting encouragement about how huge their muscles were; joining the Navy and spending all my time in confined quarters with other sailors for six months at sea; and reading Details magazine.

Each thing was more repulsive and incorrect than the last; I needed a morally pure, family-values-type activity. So I settled down on the couch with my uterus-possessing significant other to watch one of my favorite movies made back when America had its priorities straight.